Well… this year I added soccer refereeing to my bag of tricks. I did it in support of my kids, to make sure that they would have an adult on the field supporting them when they were assisting for senior men’s games. If I’m that adult there will certainly be limits put on any bad language and absolutely no abuse of assistant referees!

Anyway, I’ve only done a couple of weekends, two men’s matches each weekend. And already the big surprise of the year is how big of a difference I think this is going to make to my fitness. It probably helps that my baseline is OK, but after the first weekend I noticed on my Garmin that I had run nearly 20km over the two matches. My feet were killing me – I haven’t done that far since my last half, and never in football boots! I didn’t even feel like I had pushed that hard, although I did try really hard to keep up with the game, and did feel a little tired at the end of my 3rd hour…

So, the revelation of the year (so far at least)? That something I started for a totally un-fitness related reason may well be the thing that transforms my fitness in 2019. I think I still need to add in some speed and agility work in there, my endurance is right on target!